An opening quotation derived from the story cited below
Quote:
“Researchers took the spike protein from several recently discovered bat viruses and encoded them onto the “backbone” of another bat virus. They would then see if that new virus was able to infect mice modified to have the same cell receptor as humans.
The work was already public. But a research progress report released for the first time by The Intercept last week indicates there was some change in functionality of these manipulated bat viruses, though scientists disagree about the quality and significance of the data.
One chart in the report suggests these chimeric viruses were initially able to grow better in the humanized mice than the original virus they were built from. Another indicates one new virus caused the mice to have significant weight loss relative to the original.”
The story
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